Frederick Busch - The Stories of Frederick Busch

Bernie walked past Pontrier to lie beneath the table.

“Hell, we listen to anything,” I said. “I once had a family—”

“You do whole families?”

“Oh, yeah. Being crazy’s a family project most of the time. I had this family, and I made them bring in their dog.”

Hearing “dog,” Bernie banged his tail against the floor.

“How’d that work out, Doc?”

“Well, I was able to help the dog. The family stayed sick.”

He whinnied again, then played back “stayed sick” on his machine. He nodded. “We’re ready,” he said. “Tell you what I know. Ask you for information we might want later on. We need the—” He waved his long hands.

“Overall picture,” I said. “Or would you say, ‘big picture’?”

“Right,” he said. “Right. You know Q & A.”

“Q & A?”

“Questions and answers. Part of your profession, right?”

“I have a Q,” I said. “How come you’re here? How come the State Department phones me up, and an official”—I gestured at him, he nodded—“leaves to fight his way through the upstate wilds? How come this attention? Were you people having her followed?”

“No,” he said, “it’s just your wife’s the second New York State citizen they’ve taken. Your senator got in on this. He wants service .”

“Politics,” I said, as if that explained something.

The coffee had dripped, and I set the pot on the table atop the terra-cotta tile Belinda had bought in Peru. Kate had told me once that Belinda’s affection for objects made of clay was a sign in her favor. He switched his recorder on and said, in a normal voice, “Briefing of Leland Dugan, four thirty pee em, January sixteen, Nineteen eighty-seven. Eight! Eight. Still not up to date.” I was afraid he was going to whinny again, but he was content with showing his gums.

“Now, Dr. Dugan.” He took off one set of glasses and put on another. “Our people liaised with representatives of the International Red Cross and certain representatives of the Druse upon notification that a Mrs. Belinda Dugan of Sherwood, New York, a member of the faculty of the State University of, ah, New York et cetera, had been taken hostage. We assume she was taken hostage. No demands have been made. Really isn’t kidnapping or hostage taking, is it, if they don’t want something in return.” He looked up. I nodded.

He looked displeased, then held up his little Japanese recorder. I said, “Yes. No.”

“Thank you, Doctor,” he told the machine, setting it down. “We have received confirmation—”

“They didn’t cut any fingers off,” I said. “Or ears? Anything like that?”

“Movies, Doctor. Movies. In our experience, this doesn’t happen.”

“It happened to Aristotle Onassis. Or Getty. One of those people. They sent him an ear.”

“Guess you’re not in the right tax bracket, Doctor,” he said. And he did draw back his gums and whinny. I set my coffee cup down somewhat harder than I’d planned to. “But not a time for levity, so let’s—” He looked at his yellow legal pad, with its green lines and red-ruled margin. I saw my name at the top of the pad, and a series of numbers arranged vertically. Beside each number were matters he’d apparently decided to set before me. As I watched, he crossed out what was next to number two. He looked up, saw me trying to read his pad, and drew it closer to him, as if we were being examined and he’d caught me trying to cheat. “No fingers or ears. Sorry you were so worried.”

“Thank you. Does it matter who has her?”

“Does matter. A lot of these people don’t negotiate. A lot of them, they’re nuts, to put it in a, well, nutshell.” Lips, then gums and teeth, then silent laughter.

“So’s Belinda,” I said.

“Clinically? Certifiably?”

“No. Although one definition of adjustment might be your ability to stay away from hostage situations in Lebanon. Or Lebanon itself. Belinda is a very, very intelligent woman of significant achievement and reputation. Right now, she hates who she is — her whole situation. She—”

“That include you, Doctor? Mind my asking? The big—”

“Yes. Big picture. No, I don’t mind. Yes, I do. What the hell. Sure, it includes me. Remember what I said before? Being crazy’s a family project. Being so sad. Disoriented. All of that. Any of that. Yes. Yes, it includes me. Yes.”

“Tough one.”

I said, “Are you married, Mr. Pontrier?”

“Twenty-nine years in two months.”

“You work at it.”

“Never had a fight.”

I cocked my head as Bernie cocks his. Pontrier replied, “Work really hard at doing everything she says!” Lips again, then gums, then teeth and the long laughed whinny.

“Will they let her go?”

“From one of the West Bank settlements, this bunch, we think. They may not be trained to negotiate. Just take people. Do whatever harm they can. Full of hate. Socialism. Radical religion. You know.”

“So what happens to my wife, Mr. Pontrier?”

“State is doing everything it can.”

“I’m very grateful.”

He crossed out two items. “Lines of communication are wide open. People out there listen hard, tell us what they hear. Friends of friends — you know what I mean? — keep asking about her. Just like the others.”

“The others.”

“You remember. Anglican. French guys. The other Americans. West German guys. Nobody’s forgetting them. Maybe you forget them. State doesn’t.”

I couldn’t have named one hostage. That was when I realized how politics, history, and extreme distances had taken Belinda from our three traffic lights, the hour’s commute to her campus, the stores that stocked Sara Lee pound-cake and vitamin supplements, and the house where, upstairs, Kate embraced my daughters and waited for word. Soon, I thought, people in so many lives will forget that woman’s name — the one who got snatched overseas. Remember?

He looked at his list, and then he looked at me, as if he had discovered my worst malfeasances. His eyes narrowed, his leathery wide mouth frowned. He seemed to reflect on what he was going to say. Then he looked at his legal pad and said, “Nobody usually takes a woman in the Middle East.”

“No?”

“You’re a shrink.”

“They don’t value women highly. Right. But they did take my wife.”

“If they don’t like women, except for, you know, the obvious stuff—”

“Cooking,” I said. “Child rearing.”

“Screwing,” he said. His eyes widened, as his nostrils did: he was daring me to rebuke him.

“All right,” I said. “We’ll use the State Department nomenclature.”

He snorted, but didn’t whinny. His cold eyes remained on me. “Have to wonder, Dr. Dugan, why they snatched her. If she’s just a — Don’t mean to us, of course, you or me. Woman.”

I shook my head.

“Who does she work for, Doctor?”

“SUNY. Sociology.”

“No, I mean over there. In Greece, or Beirut, wherever the cell was. Who was she working for?”

“Cell? Spies? Is that what you mean? Is that what the State Department thinks? Belinda Hosford Dugan, middle-aged spy?”

I saw Melissa walk in slowly and quietly. Her hands hung straight at her sides. She was nine, the age of perfection in childhood. She wanted nothing more than to give her love to much of what breathed. Her hair was drawn over to one side in a crooked, rearing wave. She wore the most innocent of miniskirts over dark tights, and her dark cotton sweater hung baggily to almost the hem of her skirt. Her legs were thin and strong. She came toward us, awaiting our discovery of her. I held my arm out, and she came to it, rolled inside it as she curled it with both hands around her waist until she stood against me.